


Heavy

by colloquialrhapsodist



Category: RWBY
Genre: Abusive Relationship - Past, Angst, F/F, Femslash, character death - mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 15:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6013381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colloquialrhapsodist/pseuds/colloquialrhapsodist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wreckage of Beacon, Blake tries to hold onto Yang, even as the guilt threatens to drown her. Spoilers for 3.12.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heavy

Blake is tired.

It is an incomprehensible sort of exhaustion, a blurred inconsistency of heavy limbs and garbled thoughts - the kind where she loses time, her perception of past and present melting together. Feelings and images alone linger, long after the details are buried beneath the groaning weight of their world crumbling around them. Her knuckles are white with the burden of clinging to the waking world, clutching Yang's hand and tracing with a trembling index finger the cool metal of an inactive Ember Celica, a lonely twin, now. Her head pounds, her breath strangled in her slowly healing torso, her eyes so puffy and swollen that it's a trial to keep them open. She forces herself to stay conscious and witness what she can of the destruction of her safe place, even as her aching eyes never leave Yang's face.

She drifts between sensations and memories as she lays in a hazy stupor, rejecting sleep, not quite awake.

First, she's laying on the ground, breathing in the hot ash of burning textbooks and wooden cafeteria tables. The violent red spark of Blush makes her think this is perhaps a campfire, and her brothers and sisters are huddled around her as Adam postures and gesticulates; his voice is low in intensity, his fingers twisting and curling in the air as he grabs at whatever intangible dream he desires to make reality. Even back then, she watched him from the shadows instead of the front row, even as he tried to draw her into his speeches. Flames flicker across his face now, hidden as ever beneath the mask. The stinging and swelling flesh of her cheek keep her grounded to the present - Adam had only hit her once before.

(Not 'only.' She shouldn't think in terms of 'only.' One blow is enough to be wrong, and illuminate the claws of a beast she didn't want to believe existed. No more excuses. Not for him.

In her hand, Yang's fingers twitch again, and the momentary relief is blissful.)

Then, she's walking - limping - staggering. Yang's body is heavy, but by comparison her feet are stone and steel. She is imagining it, surely, but is that whistle of the wind the sound it makes as it blows through the hole in her torso? There isn't one, not with her Aura still intact, but she feels so empty that there must be a hollow contour that Adam carved. She wants to retch; she keeps her eyes on Yang, on her face, watching for fluttering eyelashes or movement beneath her eyelids. In the burning world around her, Yang's face is an anchor, real and solid.

She remembers how Yang's eyes look. Soft and lively, a cool lavender to even out her wild lion hair and cheeky grins. She knows those eyes by candlelight; she knows them with the green of the Emerald Forest, the first she saw, all that time ago; she knows them even when one closes, so quickly that Blake forgets to blush; she knows them even when they're that bright, boiling red, and all of Adam's fire cannot compare because Yang would never let the fire consume her.

But now they're closed, and Blake refuses to close her own.

Voices drift over to her, now. Something about moving the survivors. She stirs a little and tries to focus on the present. Beacon has fallen; it's a dull reality in the back of her mind, and one she is avoiding acknowledging.

"Blake..."

A shadow falls over her. Sun. She doesn't look up.

"Blake, we gotta get moving."

"What about Ruby and Weiss?" For someone who feels like her thoughts are spilling out of cracks in her skull, she's remarkably coherent. (When she speaks, she always means it.)

"We're gonna wait for them, don't worry about that - " A bite of impatience to his tone; she vaguely recalls him trying to talk them out of going after Jaune and Pyrrha. Sun is pragmatic, and they get along for that, but now his pragmatism scares her. An irrational, terrified thought sneaks into her head, that he'll ask her to leave Yang behind. "But we need to board the ship,  _now_ , so that we can move out the second they get back."

"I'm not leaving Yang." 

Her voice must sound a little pitched with desperation, because this is when Sun kneels by her, softening his voice in a rare moment of sensitivity. "You won't have to. She's coming with. I can carry - "

Blake doesn't know if he's going to say 'Yang' or 'you,' but either option is unbearable. She begins to sit up before he's finished speaking, her hand tight around Yang's. Pain spikes through her, and she grits her teeth against the throbbing black-and-red that trembles on the edge of her vision. "No. I'll take her."

Nora and Ren, who are leaning on each other for support with the weight of standing, watch her. It's Nora who says, "Blake, you're hurt, you can't - "

"I said I can do it." Her voice is momentarily heated; she hoists Yang up, wrapping the girl's arm around her shoulders and taking her by the waist. She bends her knees slightly, adjusting to carry the weight.

"Don't be stupid, Blake - " Sun stands, trying to rest his hand on her arm, and Blake pulls back from him, hissing. He steps back, his eyes flicking to the side, and for just half a second, Blake feels guilty.

Another straw of guilt, to add to the near-insurmountable pile. Her own back will break under the pressure if she lets herself think about it too much. She can't, right now - not while Yang needs her. She shoves the stack of shame as far out of her mind as possible, where it looms.

"... Watch her," Sun commands Ren and Nora, and in her exhaustion Blake is irritated again. "I've got to go check on Neptune."

He strides away, Ren and Nora watching him with a bemused sort of helplessness, and almost in unison swivel their eyes to look at Blake again. She's already moving; her eyes are firmly on the ship ahead of her, and while she must have memorized every contour and curve of Yang's face by now, there's an instinctual fear that if she looks back to the side Yang won't be there anymore, as if all the weight in Blake's arms could vanish in a second. So she doesn't look, not at all, staring directly in front of her, as her heart flutters like a bird trapped in a cage.

Ren and Nora exchange a glance, and begin their own long, painful trek after her.

 

* * *

 

Blake sees the flash of white from the ship's window. Watches the draconic Grimm freeze in place, watches the black bird that zips through the sky to the wreckage of the tower. Worry for Ruby is overpowering. Weiss looks over at her, trying to exchange a glance, but Blake keeps her eyes locked on the glass. Yang's head is on her shoulder, and her fingers are laced in Yang's hair. A second ago, she was stroking the golden curls - but now her hand is frozen.

She should have waited for Ruby. She let her fear for Yang take hold of her. She let her fear of seeing Beacon fall to the hands of old friends drive her from the grounds early, when she should have been fighting to stay.

Blake bows her head.

"Ruby's  _fine._ " Weiss is stubborn when she wants to believe something; it might as well be true to her, no matter how many details there are to the contrary. She's the kind of person that will announce how she perceives something over and over again, in increasingly hysterical tones, until it becomes true. Blake wants to argue, but the tiredness drags at her, keeping her tongue heavy and immobile in her mouth. "She's our leader, and she's the best one any of us could ever ask for. She has to be okay, Blake! She  _has_ to."

Blake wants to share her convictions, but Yang is still unconscious, and that's more than enough to destroy her spirits.

If Ruby's dead, it's her fault for not waiting. If Yang dies, it's her fault for letting Adam see her.

The last straw settles on top of the pile. It's too heavy, and she can't look away.

 

* * *

 

It's when Yang begins to stir that Blake leaves.

The sun is just beginning to rise on the city of Vale. For all those stories of things being darkest before dawn, the world has never felt quite so bleak. The streets are empty; most of the Grimm had flocked to the school, and citizens are in hiding or evacuated to safe houses. It's quiet, except for the stark, gentle sound of Jaune crying.

There is nothing about his pain that she envies. She was never close with Pyrrha, and she regrets not trying to know her more. But there is something about the openness of his grief - that he allows himself, in the middle of the wreckage and among strangers and friends, to  _feel._ Her world is filled with so much harsh red emotion that she does all she can to shut it out, and even here, when they're overlooking the remains of an apocalypse, she doesn't cry.

Her tears were spent; she could only cry for Yang. She can't cry for herself. She can't be so terribly selfish.

She's the one who dragged her team into this. She looks at Yang, resting up against a wall; she looks at the empty space where her right arm should be. She looks at Jaune, sobbing into Nora's arms, who lets out a shuddering wail herself - and even Ren, so reserved and quiet, is holding onto them, his head bowed. She looks up, up, up at the broken tower; from behind her, she hears General Ironwood say something to Professor Goodwitch, something like "he's coming back, and he has another student with him." 

If she had not been here tonight, if she had never gone to Beacon - if she had chosen a different school, a different path, a different exit... would Adam have come tonight? Would he have left such a wake of carnage if he had not been so set on hurting her?

This can't happen again.

Sun is coming over to talk to her. He must see her staring up aimlessly at the stars that are slowly being swallowed by the burgeoning sunlight. Quickly, she kneels by Yang, who is starting to sigh. She cups her cheek with one hand, staring at her face. She burns it into her memory - another sensation to bleed through the present, even as she's so tired that the world is swimming in and out of view.

Images slip through her mind as she stares at Yang. A wink. A dance. A grin, a playful compliment. A warm embrace in the softly lit classroom. All soft and kind. She kisses Yang's cheek with more gentleness than she would have ever thought her bloodied hands capable. Then again, and again - if she does it enough maybe when Yang wakes up she'll feel and  _know_ how much Blake loves her.

Sun waits awkwardly for Blake to stand, and when she does, she looks directly at him.

"Hey, look - " he starts.

"Yang's waking up. Make sure she gets help."

He blinks, startled and suspicious. "But... aren't you - "

"I'm leaving," she says, closing her eyes and turning her back to him.

"Blake, what the hell are you talking about? You can't leave now - "

"I have to do this, Sun." Burning. Yang's face burned into her eyelids. "Don't follow me."

He reaches for her, but his hand passes through empty air, the image of her dark hair fading back into nothingness.

**Author's Note:**

> A word vomit more than anything else. I want to make it known that I don't think it was the right decision for Blake to run, and that her thinking everything is her fault is the response of a victim of abuse - not because everything was actually her fault (because none of it was, save for leaving). I just wanted to try and capture that fear and desperation that drove her to leave.


End file.
